


Bouts of Melloncholia

by Tierfal



Category: Death Note, Fullmetal Alchemist
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Crossover, Friendship, Humor, M/M, Performance Theater, Shakespeare
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-12-17
Updated: 2012-12-17
Packaged: 2017-11-21 08:02:58
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,443
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/595393
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Tierfal/pseuds/Tierfal
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It's possible that Ed's and Mello's friendship is primarily founded on their shared appreciation of words that start with F and end with polite society taking offense.</p><p>(Prompt was: <i>FMA drama!school AU with a cameo from Mello</i>.  Insanity is: all mine.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	Bouts of Melloncholia

**Author's Note:**

  * For [squanderbird](https://archiveofourown.org/users/squanderbird/gifts).



> Mello crushing on Hughes is _entirely_ Eltea's fault. I will not be blamed for this. I WILL NOT.
> 
> The rest of the crazy's mine, though. XD'' They are more or less at [RADA](http://www.rada.ac.uk/) in London, although keep in mind that my gaps in knowledge have sprouted gaps in knowledge…

Mello takes a long drag, hands the cigarette to Ed, and blows out a narrow stream of smoke.  “Hughes is making us do Shakespeare,” he says.

Ed is going to quit this stupid one-social-cigarette-a-day habit.

…tomorrow.

“So what?” Ed asks.  Mmm, nicotine.  Even with the vastness of his scientific genius behind him, he can’t figure out how tar can taste this good.  “You worried he’s going to fill in as the Juliet to your Romeo—no, as the _Antonio_ to your _Bassanio_ —and try to make out with you, and you’ll pretty much _die_ , and everybody’ll find out about your hilarious crush?”

“It’s not fucking hilarious,” Mello says, snatching back the cigarette, but it’s such an automatic response that there’s no anger in it, and it’s not like F-bombs strafe anything between the two of them.  “He’s our campy-ass tutor, he’s _married_ , and he’s a _dude_.”

“It’s pretty funny,” Ed says.

“You wouldn’t think it was funny if it was you,” Mello says, holding out the cigarette.

Ed takes it.  “Probably not.”

Fortunately-except-really-not-fortunately, Ed is preoccupied being in love with his flatmate, who is a physicist who does things like getting up at four in the morning to bake so that Ed can have scones for breakfast before the most important monologue of his drama school career.

“How’s your brother?” Mello asks.

“Fabulous,” Ed says.  “The little bastard.  He’s got so many friends in stupid China now that he doesn’t have time to Skype me more than twice a week.”

“Tragic,” Mello says.

“Shut the fuck up,” Ed says.  “How would you feel if your heart and soul could only Skype you every now and again?”

“Well, I wouldn’t leap into histrionics.”

“No,” Ed says, unable to stop smirking.  “You’d be more for—”

“Don’t even _say_ it—”

“— _Mellodrama_.”

“Fucker.”

“Takes one to know one,” Ed says.

Mello rolls his eyes and crushes out the cigarette against the step.  “Whatever helps you sleep at night, Elric.  We’re due for Hughes, and if I hear a _whisper_ out of you, I’m calling that Heiderich kid and confessing on your behalf.”

“We need another asshole to hang out with,” Ed says as they slip in through the door to the stairwell, which they propped open, because who the hell has time to walk all the way back around to the front of the building?  “Then we could be a flock of fuckers.  We could be a _trifecta_ of fuckers.”

“You have a weird brain,” Mello says, and Ed can’t really argue with that.

 

 

“Billy and I have a long and exciting history,” Hughes says, beaming around the room.

 _I hate you,_ Mello thinks.

“It’s called _Henry IV, Part 1_ ,” Hughes says.  “I wrote all of Falstaff’s lines.”

Someone starts to laugh awkwardly and then goes silent when they realize they’re alone.

“Tough crowd,” Hughes says, utterly undaunted—and maybe that’s part of it.  Ed’s always telling Mello to be more scientific, because Ed is a little shit, and also because that’s how Ed perceives the universe—and maybe that’s kind of valid, in its way.  Maybe part of what Mello finds so stupidly attractive about Hughes is his absolute confidence.  Hughes is loud and enthusiastic and cheesy as fuck, and he doesn’t give two shits what anybody thinks about it.

There’s also the glasses, which make it easier to see how perfectly olive-green his eyes are; and the section of hair that’s always hanging in his face; and the weird predilection for purple shirts; and the endless wellspring of compassion that seems to extend to even the crappiest of the actors on this course.

Ed would probably say it’s an opposite charges kind of a thing—everything is fucking atomic to Ed; sometimes Mello wishes he believed that things were that simple.  Maybe this almost is.  Maybe it’s that Hughes is just so many things that Mello’s _not_ , and the unfamiliarity is appealing.  Wouldn’t it be great to let people in so easily?  Wouldn’t it be great to _care_ about people—to care about _everything_?  It’s the apathy, not the anger, that winds itself around Mello’s ankles, tighter and tighter until it slowly drags him down.  He’s willing to bet Hughes has never been apathetic about a damn thing in his whole life.  Hughes probably gets insanely invested in his _breakfast cereal_ ; certainly he’s never gotten sucked into the meaninglessness of his entire _life_.

“So,” Hughes says, “who can tell me a bit about my old friend Bill?”

“Dead white male author,” Cerise says, and then she gives this pointed little yawn and levels a challenging look on Hughes.

“Arguably,” Hughes says, grin unchanged, “the _best_ dead white male author.  Anybody know when he died?”

“1616,” Ed says.  He knows when all the playwrights died and never has any idea when they were born.  Kid needs _therapy_.

“Right you are, young man,” Hughes says brightly.  “Let us not forget, if we may, that he was a product of his era, and that his work needs to be contextualized.  Let us also not forget that most of his canon was produced during the reign of Elizabeth the First.  Let us _also_ not forget that, despite the fact that women were not legally permitted to act, he wrote a heck of a lot of _heroines_.  In light of which, my dear, talented Cerise, would you come up to the front and play the delectable Beatrice?  And… Mihael.”

 _Fuuuuuuuuuuuck_.

Surely Hughes can see the unmitigated horror on Mello’s face, but he doesn’t acknowledge it.  “I still don’t think we’ve seen the extent of your charm.”

“That’s because I don’t have any,” Mello says.

“Nonsense!” Hughes cries, clearing the wooden blocks to make space.  Cerise drags her feet on the way up to join him but deigns to assist.  “Come here and play Benedick and charm my pants off, or so help me, I will _fail_ you.”

 _Fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck_.  Mello’s thinking about Hughes’s pants.  He really can’t afford to do that.  What color would they be?  Probably psychedelic tie-dye rainbow or something.  Or they’d say something ridiculous across the back, like ‘HIPS DON’T LIE’. _Stop thinking about it!_

Mello takes the script page carefully so that he doesn’t brush Hughes’s fingertips in the transfer.  He can _feel_ Ed’s eyes on his back—uncannily yellow, as always; sadistically amused at Mello’s suffering, as usual.

“If the role’s so progressive,” Cerise says when Hughes offers her the paper, “ _you_ play it.”

Hughes smiles like the sun and the stars and a billion LEDs.  “If you’re sure,” he says.  “She _is_ my favorite.”

Mello shoots a startled glance back at Ed, who pauses in looking like he’s won the lotto long enough to shrug in a way that clearly means _I swear I didn’t make this happen with some impressive undisclosed psychic powers_.

Mello hates him anyway.  Mello hates everything.  Mello is about to have to flirt with his hot thirty-some-year-old acting coach in front of the entire class; oh, _God_.

Whatever unconscionable crime he committed in a past life, he’s very, very, sincerely _sorry_ already.

 

 

Sometimes Ed thinks it would actually be less painful to buy one of those little steel shish-kebab spears and skewer his heart repeatedly than it is to walk in the door every day and see Alfons’s eyes light up.

“Ed!  How was class?”

German accents were never particularly sexy before Ed met Alfons.  Cognitive revisionism _blows_.

“Fine,” Ed says.  “How are you?”

“Great!” Alfons says warmly.  “Only, I’m very sorry, but I was—how do you say?—preoccupied, and I forgot to buy groceries—”

“Aw, c’mon,” Ed says.  “You know you don’t have to babysit me like that.  And anyway, let’s just order in a pizza and watch a crap film and act like sloppy bachelors tonight.”

Alfons always smiles with his entire face. That smile always flips Ed’s entire stomach.

“A lovely idea, I think,” Alfons says. “Did you have a film in mind?”

In the end Ed queues up a couple musicals—he has to sing for an exam in a couple weeks, since apparently public humiliation is a mandatory part of the program, and maybe it’ll be marginally less horrible if he starts getting in the mood now.

And if Alfons passes out leaning on Ed’s shoulder halfway into _My Fair Lady_ —and if Ed accidentally strokes at his cheek in the process of tugging the blanket a little closer around his shoulders—and if Alfons makes a sort of soft-happy kitten noise—and if Ed hesitates, hesitates, and runs his fingers gently through Alfons’s cornsilk hair—

Well, some nights, impaling his heart on the impossibility feels a lot like flying.


End file.
